1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an automatic performance device, and more particularly to an automatic performance device designed to reduce the amount of data to be stored through representing the information on musical notes by digital words with various word lengths.
2. Prior Art
A number of automatic performance devices have been known and proposed. In the conventional type of automatic performance devices proposed so far, the pitch data and the note length data for each note in progression of a series of notes are stored in a memory unit, and based on the pitch and note length data read out successively from the memory unit, a musical tone is produced or the key-press position is indicated.
However, this type of automatic performance device has been defective in that a large quantity of data must be stored and memory units with large storage capacity are required since the information on notes is represented by digital words whose word lengths are equal. Another drawback of the conventional type is that, in the case of recording the pitch and note length data in magnetic cards, etc. before storing them in memory units, the magnetic cards with large area are required, thus making the handling thereof inconvenient.